Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Kristen
The phone sits on my kitchen counter like a grenade with a pulled pin.
Seven days since I walked out of the Sartori compound with a sad Lily in my arms and a hole in my chest the size of Lake Michigan. Seven nights of crying into my pillow after she falls asleep, muffling the sounds so she doesn't hear her mother falling apart.
I've put this off long enough.
My finger hovers over Pietro's number.
Just do it, Kristen. Rip off the bandage.
I hit call before I can talk myself out of it again.
"Mrs. Thomas." Pietro's voice is calm, professional. "I wondered when you'd call."
"I need to discuss the debt." The words come out steadier than I feel. My free hand grips the edge of the counter hard enough to turn my knuckles white. "The hundred and forty thousand. I want to set up a payment plan."
Silence stretches across the line.
"I can do fifteen hundred a month," I continue, because silence makes me ramble. It always has. "It'll take years, I know, but I'll pay back every cent. I just need—"
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"Every payment you attempt will be returned to your account within twenty-four hours." Pietro's tone doesn't shift. Completely matter-of-fact. "The family won't accept a penny. That decision was made the moment you saved my mother's life."
"That's not—I can't just—" My voice cracks. Dammit. I press my palm against my eye socket, pushing back the burn of tears I refuse to shed. Not now. Not on this call. "Pietro, I need to pay this back."
"Why?"
The question catches me off guard. "Because I owe it."
"You owe us nothing." A pause. "If anything, we owe you. And not just for Aria."
I don't ask what he means. I'm afraid of the answer.
The silence stretches again, and I find words tumbling out before I can stop them. "Is everyone... is everyone alright?"
Stupid question. You left. Why do you care?
But I do care. That's the problem.
"Define 'alright.'"
My throat tightens. I don't speak.
Pietro exhales slowly. "Everyone in this house struggles with a lot, Kristen. Some more than others. Some in ways they refuse to admit."
Nico. He's talking about Nico. I know it in my bones.
"I don't usually do this," Pietro continues. "But I'm asking you—call Nora. Call Vittoria. Now and then, when you can."
"Why?"
"Because they miss you." A beat. "They miss Lily."
The tears I've been fighting spill over. I turn away from the counter, pressing my back against the refrigerator and sliding down until I'm sitting on the cold linoleum floor.
"Vittoria especially. She's not handling... certain things well."
I want to ask about Nico. The question burns on my tongue like whiskey. How is he? Is he eating? Sleeping?
But I don't ask. I can't.
"I'll call them," I whisper instead. "I will."
"Good." Pietro clears his throat, and the businesslike tone returns. "Is there anything else?"
Yes. Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I understand why he did it, even if I hate how he did it. Tell him I miss him so much I can't breathe sometimes.
"No," I say. "That's everything."
"Take care of yourself, Kristen . And Lily."
"Goodbye, Pietro."
I hang up before he can respond.
The phone drops from my fingers onto the floor beside me. I pull my knees to my chest and bury my face against them, letting the sobs come now that no one can hear.
I keep pretending our cramped apartment feels like home again, of acting like I don't wake up reaching for someone who isn't there.
I thought leaving would feel like freedom.
Instead, it feels like drowning.
You did the right thing, I tell myself for the hundredth time. He manipulated you. He made decisions about your life without asking. That's what you swore you'd never accept again.
The apartment feels smaller every day.
Maybe it's because I got used to endless hallways. Or maybe it's because every corner here holds a memory of struggling just to survive. Either way, the walls press in tighter now.
I sit at my tiny kitchen table with a cup of coffee that's gone cold, scrolling through job listings on my cracked phone screen. Waitress. Cashier. Night shift stocker. The same positions I've cycled through for months, always one emergency away from losing everything.
Here we go again.
Lily started kindergarten yesterday. Her teacher seems kind, and Lily came home chattering about a girl named Maya who shared her crayons. Normal kid stuff. The stuff she deserves.
I wanted a few days to breathe before diving back into the job hunt. The irony isn't lost on me—I can afford this brief pause because of money I earned at the Sartori compound. Money that feels like it burns a hole in my bank account.
My thumb hovers over a listing for a diner three blocks away. Flexible hours. Tips. The kind of job I can do in my sleep.
Things are going to be hard again.
I know this. I've lived this. But things are different now.
Jack is gone.
The guilt crept in at first. Someone threatened him. Someone from Nico's world made him sign those documents and leave. I should feel terrible about that.
I don't.
"Making a family with you was the biggest mistake of my life."
His words echo in my head, and instead of the familiar sting, I feel something else. Clarity.
A parent who loves their child doesn't say that. Not ever. Not under any circumstances. If someone had threatened me, told me to disappear or else, I would have clawed through concrete walls to see Lily again. I would have fought until my last breath.
Jack folded like a cheap lawn chair.
So yes. I feel relieved.
My heart is broken, but at least that particular weight has lifted.
Nico.
His name surfaces unbidden, the way it does a hundred times a day. I picture his dark eyes watching me across a room. The way his jaw tightens when he's holding back. How his hands were always so careful with me.
I miss him.
God, I miss him so much it hurts. Like someone reached into my chest and carved out a piece of me.
The fury burned out within hours of leaving the compound. I was halfway through unpacking Lily's suitcase when it hit me—the full weight of what I'd done. What I'd said.
"I hate you."
I told him I hated him. Watched something shatter behind his eyes and walked away.
Part of me meant it. I hated what he did.
But I didn't hate him.
I fell for him. Completely. Stupidly. Despite every red flag and warning sign. Despite knowing exactly what kind of man he is and what kind of world he lives in.
I think about him every moment. When I'm cooking Lily's dinner, I remember how he watched me in the compound kitchen. When I'm lying in bed at night, I feel the ghost of his body next to mine. When Lily mentions Vittoria or asks about the rabbits, my heart clenches so hard I can't breathe.
Part of me believed he would come.
That first night back in the apartment, I kept glancing at the door. Waiting for that heavy knock. His voice on the other side, demanding I let him in. I imagined the argument we'd have, the things I'd scream at him, the way it would end with his mouth on mine and his hands everywhere.
He didn't come.
He didn't call.
Nothing.
What did you expect? I ask myself bitterly. You told him you hated him. You walked out. You made your choice.
But it doesn't feel like a choice. It feels like survival instinct kicking in at the worst possible moment.
My phone buzzes. Vittoria's name flashes on the screen.
V: Lily's bunnies miss her. Sir Floppington the Fourth has been dramatically flopping around the hutch in protest. I think he's staging a hunger strike. (He's not. He ate three carrots this morning. But the DRAMA, Kristen.)
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. The first real laugh in days.
I type back: Tell him Lily drew him a picture. A purple bunny with wings. She says he can fly now.
V: OMG. Send it immediately. I'm framing it.
I don't respond right away. I set the phone down and stare at the water-stained ceiling of my apartment. The crack that's been there since we moved in. The faint sound of the neighbors arguing through the thin walls.
This is my life. This is what I chose.
Nico
The timestamp reads 03:47 when I catch the discrepancy.
I've watched this footage six times now, frame by frame, the blue glow of my laptop the only light in my bedroom. The shipment from Jersey—forty-two crates logged at the warehouse, but only thirty-nine loaded onto the truck. Three crates vanished somewhere between dock and destination.
Three crates don't just walk away.
I rewind, watch again. The forklift operator moves the pallets. Normal. The truck backs in. Normal. Then there's a gap—seventeen seconds where the camera angle shifts just enough that the loading bay door sits in a blind spot.
Seventeen seconds. Someone knew exactly where to stand.
My door opens without a knock. Only one person in this house does that.
"You look like shit," Pietro says.
I don't look up from the screen. "Busy."
He crosses the room, and I smell coffee. Real coffee, not the whiskey that's become my water. He sets a mug on my nightstand like I'm going to drink it.
"Kristen called."
My fingers freeze on the keyboard. Just for a second. Then I force them to keep typing, pulling up another camera angle I've already memorized.
"Did she." My voice comes out flat. Good.
"She wants to pay back every penny." Pietro settles into the chair by my window. The one I've been avoiding because it faces the garden where Lily used to play with those damn rabbits. "Set up a payment plan. Fifteen hundred a month."
Of course she did.
"She's stubborn," I say. The word tastes like ash. Like the cigarettes I've been chain-smoking since she walked out seven days ago. Seven days, fourteen hours, and roughly thirty-two minutes. Not that I'm counting.
"I told her no."
"Good."
Pietro doesn't leave. I feel him watching me.
"How are you handling this?"
I finally look at him. My brother sits there in his pressed shirt, concern carved into the lines around his eyes, and I want to laugh. Or scream. Maybe both.
"I survived until now."
"Vittoria says you're not eating."
"Vittoria should mind her own business."
"She says you're living on whiskey."
I gesture to the half-empty bottle of Macallan on my desk. The good stuff. If I'm going to pickle my liver, might as well do it with quality. "I'm alive, aren't I? Until the whiskey kills me, you can assume I'm nutritioning myself very well."
"Nico—"
"I have work to do." I turn back to the laptop. "Three crates missing from the Jersey shipment. That's the third discrepancy this month. Either we have a leak or someone's testing us."
For a long moment, he doesn't move. Then he stands, and his hand lands on my shoulder. Heavy. Warm. The kind of touch I used to flinch away from because comfort felt like weakness.
He then leaves. The door clicks shut behind him, and I'm alone again with the blue light and the missing crates and the half-empty bottle that's going to need replacing soon.
She asks about you.
I close the laptop. Lean back in my chair. Stare at the ceiling.
Claudio briefs me every day. I don't ask—he just knows. She's at home. She took Lily to the park. She bought groceries. She hasn't left the apartment in two days.
She never leaves that shitty apartment.
I should stop the surveillance. It's pathetic. It's obsessive. It's exactly the kind of controlling behavior she accused me of.
But I can't stop. Because if I stop watching, I'll have nothing left of her at all.
What I've learned from Kristen Thomas is simple: love sucks. It rips you open and leaves you bleeding and doesn't even have the decency to kill you quickly.
The bedroom door stays closed. The house stays quiet. And I sit here in the dark, thinking about gray-blue eyes and a laugh I'll never hear again, and I realize something.
I don't care anymore.
If someone walked through that door right now with a gun, I wouldn't reach for mine. I'd welcome the bullet. At least then this hollow ache in my chest would finally stop.
My phone buzzes. I consider ignoring it. I've been considering ignoring everything lately.
But the screen shows Dante's name, and Dante doesn't call unless it matters.
"Yeah."
"The Russians." His voice cuts through the whiskey fog in my skull. "Meeting's in two hours. Bellini's back room."
Fuck.
I'd forgotten. The Bratva wants to negotiate for the docks, and I'd completely forgotten.
"When did you get back?" I ask, buying time while my brain struggles to catch up.
"Two days ago. Lorenzo's handling the Sicily debrief with Pietro now." A pause. "You sound like shit."
"Everyone keeps telling me that."
"Can you handle this?"
Can I?
"I'll be ready in five."
"Nico—"
"Five minutes." I hang up before he can say whatever sympathetic bullshit is forming on his tongue.
The bathroom mirror shows me exactly what I expected. A man who looks like he's been through a war and lost. I splash cold water on my face, drag a razor across my jaw, and try to remember what it felt like to give a damn about anything.
Sicily is settled, at least. Valentino stayed behind to watch over Aria, Ava, and his own mother. The family's European interests are secure. One less thing to worry about.
Maybe I should leave too. Disappear to the old country for a few months. Let the Mediterranean sun bake this hollow feeling out of my bones.
But that would require energy. Effort. The ability to care whether I live or die.
I'm fresh out of all three.
I pull on a clean shirt.
Dante's waiting in the hallway when I step out. His eyes scan me the way he'd scan a crime scene.
"You look—"
"Don't." I walk past him toward the stairs. "What's our position on the docks?"
He falls into step beside me, accepting the subject change. "Pietro wants to hear their offer. Doesn't mean we're taking it."
We reach the garage. Liam's already behind the wheel of the armored SUV, engine running. I slide into the back seat and lean my head against the cold glass.
I shouldn't be doing this. I'm in no condition to negotiate anything more complex than which bottle of whiskey to open next. My judgment's compromised. My focus is shot. Every time I close my eyes, I see gray-blue ones staring back at me, filled with tears and accusations.
I hate you.
But I can't show weakness. Not now. Not when the Russians are sniffing around our territory and three crates are missing from Jersey and everything feels like it's falling apart.
I close my eyes. Just for a second.
Kristen's face appears behind my eyelids. Not angry this time. Laughing. That ridiculous feather-duster dance.
Stop.
I open my eyes. Focus on the city lights blurring past the window.
Two hours. I just need to hold it together for two hours.
Then I can go back to my room and my whiskey and my surveillance footage of a woman who's better off without me.
The SUV pulls up to Bellini's. I straighten my spine. Set my jaw. Become the man the Russians expect to see—cold, calculating, dangerous.
Time to work.